Chivalric men at arms and feudal men at arms.

**Arkell** · 10-03-2005, 11:23

i am intrigue by CBR numbers on ap up there, which stated..

1-2/+0
3-4/+1
5-6/+2 (for infantry)

(again shield bonus confusing me) so, if i have a v0 militia sergeant and charge it against my enemy's v0 fmaa, would my militia sergeant got +1 or +2 ap bonus? does this 'enemy armor' just the base points or plus the shields? because if base, then fmaa has 3 armor which makes my militias only got +1 but plus shield fmaa has armor 5 hence giving my militias +2.

**econ21** · 10-03-2005, 11:35

I think it's just +1. AP does not help against the shield bonus, just the armour.

**CBR** · 10-03-2005, 11:46

Yes it would just be +1. When you check stats during a battle (F1) you will notice that FMAA has armor 5$ and $ means its with shield value included to give overall armor value. There is unfortunately no way of checking the base armor stats for units ingame, so you have to check the base stats in the unitstat txt file.

CBR

**Arkell** · 10-03-2005, 19:32

Ahhhhh... then you guys have cleared this issue for me, thanks very much.

Shield bonus will adds to the defense stat for melee and also adds armor against missiles, but this 'added shield armor' doesnt contributes to enemy's armor piercing.

Also if these FMAA and CMAA have a 1 on 1 fight, is it right if i make the following statement..

"CMAA have an edge and wins at equal valor, but FMAA will prevail at equal florin"

**EatYerGreens** · 10-03-2005, 21:28

It would be interesting to know if the contribution of shield against missiles has 'sidedness' to it.

In other words, the unit has shields on their left arm and
1) are inherently better protected against arrows coming at them from their left (your right if you're doing the shooting); (see EDIT)
2) have a 'probability score' for reacting in time to arrows coming at them head-on (i.e. the shield has to be physically moved to the right place to catch the arrow) and
3) are inherently less well protected against missiles coming at them from their right, because they can't move the shield to that side of themselves without swivelling around on the spot.

This will be quite hard to test since you'd need to be the side controlling the archers, to determine the firing angles and assess the casualty rates but the AI isn't going to obligingly sit still and let you shoot it's men down... it'll come chasing after you!

Actually, Multiplayer seems like the ideal unit testing environment, whereby both players can cooperate to make the test go the way it was intended. The only difficulty being the urge to just play a normal MP battle, rather than spend the time doing this sort of thing.

EDIT: I need to rephrase this, for clarity. Their left is the right side of the unit as you look at it, when firing. So, if the unit is to the left of your archers, they are better protected. If it's to the right, they're less well protected.

In several recent SP battles, where I wait for the enemy to come at my defensive position, I notice how they initially march to their right, so their left side faces me as they approach and my archers begin firing, then they turn left, to come in on my left flank on a diagonal.

**CBR** · 10-03-2005, 23:21

IIRC shields protect the front 180 degrees of a soldier.

CBR

**Patron** · 10-04-2005, 04:26

I'm going to try CMAA +1 armour vs FMAA +1 valour

FMAA 4554
CMAA 4564

Armour doesn't count in melee, so the CMAA should only be a little more fatigued than usual. So the CMAA will defend and I will walk my FMAA over.

The AI sometimes decides to about face 90 degrees before I'm about to charge so I probably won't get a 1000% fair fight and I lost my Cd code so I can't play on multiplayer and get someone to control CMAA for me.

**Patron** · 10-04-2005, 04:43

mathematically perfect 4 ranks charge engage at will autumn lush completely flat treeless steppes, slightly brisk but sunny dry day

The CMAA won twice with a kill ratio of around 5/3. At the start the kill rates were about equal, but as the line thinned out and there were more instances of soldiers getting attacked from the side the CMAA began to pwn. It might have something to do with their defense bonus when being attacked from behind.

**EatYerGreens** · 10-04-2005, 19:49

Originally Posted by CBR

IIRC shields protect the front 180 degrees of a soldier.

Thanks. Slightly simplistic, IMHO, but sometimes simple is best. Personally, I would have gone for 120-140 degress but assymetric, L90° to R50°, say.

I've edited my previous post, for the sake of clarification.

**econ21** · 10-04-2005, 10:00

Originally Posted by EatYerGreens

It would be interesting to know if the contribution of shield against missiles has 'sidedness' to it.

Some posters playing Rome Total Realism 6.1 (where missle attack is low - BI may be another case) certainly work on that assumption. Of course they could be wrong or what is true of RTW may not be true of MTW, but it would be useful to have this confirmed one way or the other.